


Your Bees [fic]

by Shuryū Yūin (Caeslin)



Series: The Law of Bees - Fic [4]
Category: Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch
Genre: But Not Your Found Family, Cultural Authenticity, Found Family, Happy, Other, Sad, mono no aware
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-20
Updated: 2014-09-20
Packaged: 2018-02-18 02:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2332214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caeslin/pseuds/Shury%C5%AB%20Y%C5%ABin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"§ 964 If your bees move in with a stationary colony, they belong to the owner of the stationary colony. Sucks for you mate."</p><p>They were never your bees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Your Bees [fic]

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Your Bees](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2319713) by Anonymous. 



> The expressions in italics cannot be rendered in English without destroying the poetry and cultural nuance of their original German context, and as such I have taken the daring choice of leaving them untranslated. Enterprising souls may look to the internet for approximations of their meaning, but know that these are no substitute for the original.
> 
> This installment contains weighty subject material. If you are in an emotionally sensitive place or cannot handle emotionally draining works of fiction, it may behoove you to revisit this work at another time. Even if you have a strong disposition, you may find this installment exceptionally upsetting to read. This will be your only warning.

You have never had an aptitude for _machtpolitik_. If you did, perhaps you would have avoided the fate that will doom you inexorably, like the sultry pull of gravity in deep space. If you had been sharper, perhaps you never would have even followed your bees, the agent of your heart's destruction and desire, the sweet whip that stokes the flame of your _masochism_ even as it soothes it with euphoric bliss.

Perhaps you would have been stronger. Braver. **Better.**

Oh, you could wear out a _mergenthaler press_ charting the steep hills and pluging valleys of your piteous shortcomings, your unsightly flaws! You are a _neanderthal_ of a man, carved inexpertly of _nickel_ out of greed and ludicrous self-pity. Even a _pinscher_ would not love you, even though a well bred German Pinscher will be a loving companion with an even temperament. The only thing about you that has ever been lovable is that which you yourself love more than the radiant fires of that divine forge, the molten sun: your bees.

Your love is like the caress of a fragrant hyacinth. It is like the thick, choking embrace of an invasive weed. It is the strongest thing about you, you who are otherwise a _poltergeist_ , wispy and ghastly as you float through life like an intruder from the shadow realm, a dalliance in a meandering, misbegotten narrative by an absentminded author. Your heart, hard as _quartz_ and sharp and cutting as _quartzite_ , is your best and simultaneously most oppressive quality.

You held onto your bees with everything you had, because that is the kind of Learian barnacle you are. But you have never had an aptitude for _realpolitik_ ; were you a _Reich_ , you would have no _Reichstag_. Everything you had has never been enough.

You thought that your bees alone would love you when no others had endured.

You thought that they would tolerate your fragmented shell of a self in a way that you yourself could never tolerate yourself.

You thought of your bees like a loyal _rottweiler_ , like a **pet** , a slavish and adoring companion to accompany you on your _rucksack_ -laden travels and travails, a jovial companion for merry picknicks of _sauerbraten_ and _sauerkraut_. You thought you could dictate their destiny, as though it was circumscribed to yours!

Surely the patrons of your narrative are laughing now in the most cutting _schadenfreude_ at your shortcomings. You knew so little, as they must have known well before you had any inkling. Your role as the jester in the royal court of your sad, weatherbeaten life is complete, irrevocably committed to the tapestry of time. A tale to wash down with _schnapps_ and stale bread, but nothing more. A leftover to feed to your _schnauzer_ , not so filling as _schnitzel_ , no, not nearly so, for it leaves a bitter aftertaste that can never be washed away.

Oh, your life has been a _schuss_ straight to the bottom.

Let us cut to the matter, like a scholar just before the sanguinary bell, like an esurient _spitz_ before its succulent _strudel_. Let us speak clearly, in plain language. There will be no dallying now.

You have already lied once in this shambling narrative. It is characteristically unconscionable of you.

The lie is this: **You thought that they alone would love you when no others had endured.**

The truth is this: **They have always loved you.**

Yes -- you, the furthest from the _übermensch_ that there could ever be! You, who are no word, no letter, not even an _umlaut_ or other trivial diacritical mark in the _ursprache_ our author is using to write the _urtext_ from which all other texts well. 

Your bees loved you anyway. They loved you because they are pure, and good. They loved you, whom it is _verboten_ to love, for you act as _vermouth_ in the liver of all who love you.

They endured all: your unholy passion, your ruthless possession, your insistence on chaining them to your side as they were never meant to be chained, a fact you have always understood even as you fervently denied it in your cave of a heart. 

They understood you. The _waltz_ they swept you up in, the barren _waldsterben_ they rescued you from in order to take you on this, this magnificent _wanderjahr_ \-- they could commandeer such an exalting accomplishment because of the strength of their love, their goodness, their apiary splendor. They honeyed your existence with their euphonius glow, and you drunk it all down but still it did not quench your thirst. 

You knew this, oh yes, you knew it even when you wanted to controvert the incontroverible, immutable fact that you, who are so unlovable -- that you could be loved!

You have spoken a deep truth in this shambling narrative. It is uncharacteristically insightful of you.

The truth is this: **they were never meant to be chained.**

Bees have a _wanderlust_ , an impulse or longing to wander or travel. This you have known. This you will never forget now.

You comprehended on some deep, dank subterranian level of your consciousness that your bees would leave you someday, as all things leave you; but still you spun illusive spiderwebs of falsehood to blind yourself from the harsh, gelid truth. You told yourself that with the right mental _wehrmacht_ , you could protect yourself from injury. You seduced yourself into believing that if your bees absconded from you, you could chase them with a _Weimaraner_ 's keen sense for the hunt. Your _weltanschauung_ was lopsided, critically underinformed. It was the _weltanschauung_ of a child, of a troll, of a troll who is still a child.

You made yourself believe that it wouldn't hurt, to see your bees leave you for someone else.

The _weltschmerz_ you feel now is absolute and all-encompassing.

They have left, they have left, they have left. Left: past participle of the verb "to leave." They are gone. Are: first person plural form of the verb "to be."

You are a lowly _wiener_. Even a Lilliputian _wiener dog_ would not find any sustinence in you, no flavor or delight, as you currently stand on this desolate moor, rubbery, chilled, unappetizing. Were you a _wienerschnitzel_ , even, you might satiate, but no, not like this, not now with your heart scattered to the desert winds.

Your bees -- "your" bees, the folly persists like a noxious fungus in your mind, the infernal possessive! -- are surely proving a truly _wunderbar_ surprise to someone else, now. Perhaps it is some _wunderkind_ , delightful and prodigious. Perhaps it is someone like you, withered like the last bitter grasshopper of summer. The bees will not discriminate. They are better than that.

Perhaps your tragedy bespeaks the _zeitgeist_ of an era, the technicolor hubris of modern times. You like to believe this in self-indulgent moments of egotism. You are a _zeppelin_ , you want to bloviate -- the very Hindenburg itself, consuming all with your hateful, incontinent flames! Your eyes are _zinc_ and your teeth are charcoal and you are a plaster sculpture of a man. All behold your flaccid glory.

You were so blind. You did not foresee. And there was no benign daschund, no flocculent feline to degauss your eye and appetite from the prize that bewitched you so.

You are a bee keeper, but you have lost your bees.

No. Not your bees.

How could they be your bees, when they were never yours?


End file.
